


A gentle tap to the window of the mind

by Piamio



Category: INSIDE (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Father and child dynamics I gues, Human Experimentation, Inside, Other, a bit of torture I guess???, fluff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 14:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21459466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piamio/pseuds/Piamio
Summary: INSIDE the game leaves a lot to interpretation so have mine from the eyes of the mermaid who then becomes the Protagonist and the head of the research that wishes nothing but helping him and the Huddle.
Relationships: Protagonist X NPC
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	A gentle tap to the window of the mind

**Author's Note:**

> If there was more lore I could have written this better, but tbh Idgaf if it´s ooc.   
Also, Protagonist was a mermaid before and that´s why he gets attacked often. CHANGE MY MIND.   
I posted a few drawings so it would be a bit more illustrative on my tumblr (piamio.tumblr.com)   
Hopefully you like it.

  
A tap on the glass window made his eyes look at the other side of the tank.   
There was a man with a mask, writing something on a board. He got closer to one person sitting on a desk.   
The person pressed a few buttons and the arms were out of the traps.   
The mechanic arms rushed forward to hold his wrists. Despite his best efforts to avoid being catched, the single chain to the tank´s floor prevented him from swimming away. Fighting was futile.   
A single electric shock from the arms and he would be in enough pain to feel like fainting. He would scream as the arms cut his skin and moved around the tissue frantically. But sound drowned on water.  
Once they were done for the day another arm would inject him opioids to transport him to the next day of experiments.   
And so the next time he opened his eyes thanks to the tap on the window, he had an audience. About 30 people looking at him with a blinding light in front of them.   
He felt the urge to cover his naked body with his hair, but the arms came to hold him tight. He revolted. The arms weren´t cutting, but one injected something on the back of his head.   
It burnt.   
It burnt so much, he felt as if he wasn´t on water. It was a foreign feeling as he had never left the placid liquid bed of his prision.   
In the pain he gazed at the trap door in the other side of the tank. He had tried swimming there before. But the electric shooks had proven themselves effective in persuading him to stay. The tank wasn´t so bad, he had thought. It was safer too. Far away from the door.   
But, it was wide open now.   
Air bubbles burst out of his mouth. He had never had trouble breathing inside the tank. Quite the opposite. But why was he feeling dizzy? As the people outside the tank cheered he struggled to breath. He swam to his chains, desperate to break them. Unaware the arms weren´t holding him anymore. He cried in pain once again as he rushed to the door and was stopped by the chains. Too short to reach. Air bubbles escaped his mouth, unable to focus now. He sensed someone above him. It was two humans with diver suits rushing towards him. He wanted to move. To swim away. But there was too much water on his lungs. He felt one of them hold him down and put an air mask as the other put three-lock handcuffs.   
He jerked in a knee reaction to suddenly being able to breath. Making one of the divers, reduce him.   
He was breathing.   
He was not a water creature anymore.   
That fact verified by the cheering of the people behind the glass window.   
But he was still a tool. 

\-------

The divers pulled him out of the water and careleslly allowed his head to hit the ground dry. He couldn´t put his hands to protect himself from the hit. But a bit of blood was easily cleaned by a napkin. He was then pulled up and pushed by two men. He recognized one as the man who tapped him awake. He stared at him for a second before the man pushed him to walk again. He wasn´t used to use his legs to walk. So he fell on the first try. It took them a few pushes and one electric shock for the boy to finally pull all his effort into walking.   
Right, left, right, left. It was easy right? More if he had an electric stick to remind him he shouldn´t stop walking. He tried to keep his head low. But kept eyeing every corridor and stairs they walked on. He grunted feeling a burning pain in his eyes. It was his first time outside the tank, but he never expected it to be this bright.   
He received a shock nonetheless when he kept walking not noticing the group had stopped. He was in front of so many more people. 

The world was loud and bright.   
He knew it would hurt, but he took an step forward and was pushed back in a strong hit that made his hair fall on his eyes. He sighed relieved his hair stopped the light from burning his eyes any longer. Nobody seemed to notice his actions until moments later that a person tucked his hair behind his ear. Forcing him back to the light. He heard someone yelled to bring a chair and a table.   
They forcefully sat him in front of the empty table. The audience observed his every move in deep attention. The silence was cut by something bumping into the table.   
It was a puzzle.   
The boy was annoyed and didn´t fear to show his disgust. He put his hands on the table at the same time the stick grew closer to him. 16 pieces that needed to be sorted out into place. The boy took on the challenge. It wasn´t the first time he solved that puzzle in specific. So it only took him a mere minute to put it together. Once he was finished he put his hands down. A wave of awe washed over him making him jump. People shushed the audience and was handed another puzzle. Another he solved in a minute.   
The third puzzle was different from the hundreds he had done before.   
He stared at it with interest. Frantically thinking how he should approach it. Thinking every possibility and option through. A shocking pain wave from his stomach took him back to reality.   
He would be dead if he dared to glare at them. Inhaling deeply, he grabbed the first puzzle piece. And the third. Mashed them together to the unanimous sound of confused chattering. Then took the five, seven and nine and mashed them to the main piece. He broke piece eleven in half and put it apart. He heard people shushing the audience, but knew he was doing alright because he hadn´t been shocked yet. After mashing small pieces to bigger ones, rotating the main piece and squander it under a bit of force, there was two small lacking spaces. He put each half of piece eleven on the spaces to make the room go dead silent.   
Suddenly a person stood up to clap. And then a second and then the whole room was applauding. He visibly made himself smaller in the chair. Hopelessly trying to cover his ears with his hands in the three-lock handcuffs.   
A swipe pulled him out of the chair and almost makes him trip as he was forced to face the thundering clapping in front of him. Suddenly the sound became muffled as a man put his hands on his ears. They were warm. 

\------

After leaving the reporters back he was left in a room with black glass. He could only see his own reflection. Putting his back against one of the mirrors, chills came down as the cold glass made contact with his skin. Pushing the feeling aside, he glared at his handcuffs. He tried to break free by force but his scrawny body wouldn´t help. He looked around knowing there was nothing to use. A Sigh. Carefully, very slowly. He pulled his hands up to his neck. How was he even breathing outside the water? That shouldn´t be possible.   
Many thoughts roamed his head for what seemed days and days. He would groan and rush around the room at times. Frustrated for not being able to escape. Or he would smash his hands against the floor to break free from the handcuffs.   
But it never worked.   
He wouldn´t dare to admit to himself that he missed a bit the man who gently tapped the window every day before the experiments. It was a reminder that he was not alone. But nobody had come to tap the window. Not to clap about him solving puzzles. There was only a cold dead silence. 

\-----

After what seemed the seventh day of no contact. Finally someone came for him. He was more accostumed to the light so it almost didn´t hurt to come outside the room into another. There he was again. The man who tapped the window. He chatted with the people escolting him to then talk to a girl who quickly called for another set of guards to take him away. 

He was then brought to a woman. Who then proceeded to brush his ankle long hair. She gave up almost instantly and decided it was easier if she just cut it. He was still handcuffed and earnestly closed his hand around one strand of hair. Twicking it to make it fit into his fist without being noticed. He felt uncomfortably light without his hair falling over his shoulders. He felt cold.   
It was an strange relief to feel his body on the water again. Partially submerged into the bathtub with hot water. He indulged into the warm as the woman bathed him thoroughly. And was actually sad to leave it as she pulled him up to dry him.   
She pulled boxers before noticing she would need to take the handcuffs off. She stepped away from the boy for a second. And both of them were surprised when he was still standing on the same place she had left him. 

It had been a gold chance, but the boy was intrigued. He didn´t understand why would they treat them that way after just by glaring, would get him immediate punishment. The boy was curious and intelligent. Maybe more than it was safe for a reformed mermaid like him.   
He kept very still as the handcuffs were taken away. The gut feeling wasn´t to run, but to obey to avoid getting punished. Maybe the next puzzle was getting through this. His reward would be to escape unharmed. 

As he was dressed with a red sweater and black laced shoes he thought about the world outside. 

So gray and misty, the only word he thought to describe it was grim. 

It was fine by him. 

It wasn´t like it was any different from the tank. 

The man who had taken the handcuffs, ordered him to put his wrists together again. But before the boy felt them again clawing against his skin, the woman gently explained maybe he wouldn´t need them again. The man glared at him with no other intention than to make him tremble. Thing he succeeded. He apologized to the woman, before putting the lock on the handcuffs again. The boy wasn´t surprised, but appreciated the intention. He was then walked to another room. Or more accurately saying, a closet. It had a chair and a desk. And a small light hanging from the ceiling. Apparently that would be the place he would be in until he was required. He knew as he heard the lock click from outside. He didn´t know what else to do but sit in the chair. 

He was alone again. So it was safe to open his hand to see the strand of hair on his fist. His world had changed at the same time it hadn´t changed at all. 

A few hours passed in silence.

The door opened before he had a chance to close his fist and hide his treasure. The man from before grabbed him by the neck and forced him to open his hand. Being visibly confused about the strand of hair. He pushed him out of the room and tossed the hair down a trash bin in their way. 

The boy was so powerless. 

\------

They did take away the handcuffs later. 

The boy had met another face to face. His hair wasn´t long as his mermaid comrades. His blond hair was short and actually fitted the yellow sweater he was wearing. He understood he wasn´t a reformed mermaid as the boy pushed him to the ground with an electric stick. 

The boy was human. 

But he was worse than the adults. 

He just enjoyed sticking the shocks into him until he passed out. 

Everyday. 

He would wake up in the ground of the boy´s room or on the ground of the closet. 

Everyday, someone would come pick him up and carry him to the boy´s room. The most normal moments were when the boy just looked at him solve puzzles. He was really good for that, so he didn´t mind. But this time, solving them or not didn´t mean a thing. As he would get shocked anyways. 

When he refused to solve them. 

Shock. 

When he refused to walk to the boy´s room. 

Shock. 

When he tried using the chair and the desk to not let them take him to the boy. 

Double shock. 

His wrists were almost purple now. It hurt him to move his hands. Which was something horribly boring for the boy with the yellow sweater. 

So another shock. 

The boy embraced himself waiting for it. But as he didnt´feel anything he opened his eyes. The boy on the yellow sweater was up and yelling to a man. Despite the mask, the man´s face was the only one he recognized in this world. He was yelling at the kid as well and even took away the stick in a swipe. He pulled him up and walked outside the room together. 

The boy blinked owlishly at the man holding his hand. They finally reached the closet that was being guarded by two other men. He talked quickly to them and entered the room with the boy.

Was he aware he was locked up with him? the boy wondered. 

The man presented him another puzzle out of his pocket. It was small but the same level of intricate as the day he got out of the tank. Before he started solving it, he took off the handcuffs. The boy opened his eyes wide in complete confussion. 

Under the mask, the man seemed to smile. The boy sat on the chair on his orders and extended his arms to him, also on his orders. He then took out an ointment from one of his pockets and started rubbing it on his aching wrists. 

The boy had never been treated with such tenderness. Not even when the woman bathed him. Why? His mind was running in circles trying to figure out why would he do that. What was the reason to be that careful. He didn´t even put the handcuffs again as he let him solve the puzzle slowly. 

He solved it in less than an hour. Once he finished he put his hands on his lap and unconsciously rubbed his wrists. The man admired the work in his hands for a moment, before ruffling the boy´s hair. 

He felt an emotion he thought himself uncapable of feeling again. 

As the man gently patted his hair before giving him another puzzle. 

He solved it feeling it. 

And felt it stronger when he got rewarded with another ruffle. 

Happiness. 

So stranged from him, he didn´t understood he was happy until the man left. 

He hoped he would see him again soon. 

\---------

And he did. 

His wrists had healed completely by the time he had solved the 128th puzzle the man had given him. In all those the man had taken a photo of the puzzle. Every little one more intricate than the last. 

He was getting faster and calmer. He would solve them in less than twenty minutes now. But when he noticed the man would leave after he solved it, he began to do it slower. The man was smart. And noticed quickly. So he had handed him impossible puzzles to motivate him. As he wouldn´t ruffle his hair if he didn´t finish before an hour passed. 

The boy visibly lit up when he saw him enter through the door. Something that wouldn´t happen if he saw any other human. But it was around the 100th puzzle he had noticed the man´s breathing was worsening. His voice getting raspy and coughing mid sentence. His hair, which was a light brown, had periodically starting to fall in thick strands. 

It wasn´t until the man started to extend the periods he wouldn´t go that the boy didn´t start to get anxious. He wouldn´t see anybody for days. Wouldn´t hear anything at all.   
During those days he sat on the chair and looked at the light above his head. For hours. 

He would give up on that and start testing the chair´s resistance to his own weight. Until it broke. 

The desk was absolutely uninteresting. A plastic white board that served as table with metal in four points. It had an small drawer on one of its sides with nothing but dust. 

The boy sighed in boredom every few minutes for the next week. 

Until the man showed up again. 

He got up from the floor feeling something like a smile forming on his face. The man greeted him with a pat on the head. But the boy couldn´t help but wonder how light it was. The man looked frail like glass. 

The boy then did something out of instinct. 

Before the man retreated his bony hand back to his pocket, the boy tapped his chest. In the same manner he would wake him up everyday on the tank. 

His vocal chords were severed many years ago. He couldn´t talk even if he wanted to. But he hoped... he wished his message was clear. 

The man let out a breath and pulled the boy into a hug. He sofly passed his hand through the boy´s hair before crouching down to uncover one of his arms. From the pocket of his lab coat, he took out a chip the size of a pill. And then pulled out a gun. The kid jerked back trying to get away from it. Before the man calmed him down shooting himself in the neck. The boy opened his mouth in horror, but blinked in shock as he saw the man was fine. 

The man waited for him to relax and put the chip into the gun and pulled the trigger. The boy let out a short whine. The man rubbed his hand gently against the skin where the chip was now. The boy tried taking a step back but suddenly, he was seeing the ceiling with his head feeling puffy. The man put him on his lap as he felt his limbs tremble and try to reach to the man. The man grabbed one of his hands on his own. 

The boy felt a warm tear roll down his cheek. And another. The last he saw was the man cry. 

\-----

After the boy had fallen unconscious the man had wiped his tears away and put an object into the plastic drawer. Then he started to scream uncontrollably. So the guards would burst in and take the boy to the lab. The man quickly got up and acting as natural as possible, he got to his car. Drove to the farm and almost twisted his ankle going down the bunker´s staircase. He got to the room adjacent. Where all the photographs were, and smoking his last cigar, he stared at them. It was all photos of the boy with his solved puzzles. 

He had met the boy when they had captured him, at least six years ago. When the plague wasn´t that bad, and food was still around and the bunker was still in construction. He hadn´t cared at all about the mermaid boy who would screech all day long in the tank because of his injuries. Until he was put into the surgery to severe his vocal chords in the CEO´s instructions. After a month of nonstop screeching, silence was almost diabolical. He would still open his mouth in an attempt to scream, but nothing but a whimper and air bubbles would come out. 

They had called him to investigate this new creatures that suddenly had appeared in the coasts to drown people. So he never expected to be involved in the Huddle investigation. His theory was that the mermaids were rogue humans that fell off the Huddle in it´s first attempts to merge with others. As they couldn´t be mind controlled as the people who fell by the plague. They were a key to finding a way to understand the Huddle´s nature. 

Their body specifically. A humanoid amphibious with intelligence. Why were the mermaids only kids? He didn´t know. And after severing his vocal chords, he couldn´t ask. He was not sure he would give him an answer anyways. 

He investigated for three years about the mermaid´s body. But he didn´t discover they were more intelligent than he originally thought when the boy had taken attention to the rubik cube on his hands. He was waiting for the test results to send him to sleep again, so he payed it no mind. The boy moved his hands along the man´s as if he also had a rubik cube. Solving an imaginary puzzle. The man wondered then, if the mermaid could solve puzzles. 

He was in charge of the puzzles they would present to the mermaid. They had tried using characters and writing as well. But it seemed the mermaid payed no mind to those. It was practical puzzles. Logic and construction that attracted his attention. 

The man realized then. That if mermaids were part of the Huddle, the Huddle itself was made of mermaids and needed to be separated from it. 

That´s when they tried to separate the bodies. But none of them looked responsive. They wouldn´t do anything at all. They didn´t think. 

But they proved to be incredibly resistant. 

Thanks to that sturdyness, they experimented to see if they could turn the brainless Huddle parts into the intelligent mermaids. And succeeded. 

But as fast as success came, the artificial mermaid was self destructive to the point of dead in the first ten hours. 

They were still miles away from recreating an actual mermaid. 

So they kept observing the boy. Tested if he could be mind controlled as well. And when that prooved to be impossible, the man noticed finally. The Hubble was something that wasn´t supposed to be investigated. It wasn´t the reason of the plague. It was another consequence of it. 

The man had debated shutting down the whole experiment when, in one of the tests to mind control the mermaid, he succeeded to access to his mind through a few shocks. 

A moment where the mermaid lost consciousness. 

It was too short to be called an opportunity, but if they could keep that state for at least 10 seconds, the mermaid could be controlled remotely. They tested it and got to the conclusion the mermaid would not keep track of what happened during the moments where he wasn´t in control. But most importantly. 

Once the mind connection was over, the mermaid came back. Meaning, no brain damage.   
  
He was euforic. Impacient to show the CEO he could mind control the mermaid and to prove useful the five years he had spent researching all of that mess. But he had unseen the possibility of only his mind working in a neural connection with the mermaid. Resulting in an injury for the CEO that put him in very low steem. 

The reason? he was infected with the plague as well. In a sense, he was part of the Huddle. 

In the end, he had being swallowed by the Huddle without noticing. 

And it was in the last mind control test, that he understood he hadn´t been the only one. 

It was a trap. 

He couldn´t stand it. Seeing his coworkers who didn´t understand, results and results pages, ordering his technician to get the voltage up for the experiments, doctors telling him they were waiting for the cure to be developed and offered him alternatives and more often than not, funerary services. 

That´s when he started to tap on the mermaid´s window to wake him up. Normally, he would have used that chance to hold him without a hassle. But, the mermaid seemed to fight the arms less this way. The mermaid seemed to get bored of the puzzles as well. 

He would change the focus of the game now. 

The mermaid had human structure as far as the exams could tell. Was it impossible to make it human? Would it destroy it? To make humans part of the Huddle?   
He would find out. 

The mermaid took in more painful experiments. More chemicals that desintoxicated him from the Huddle´s cells. That made him a creature of earth. 

And the day he took him out of the tank, it was the day, he made a mermaid, not human nor part of the Huddle. An hybrid. And he seemed to be the key he was looking for. 

The plague didn´t affect him and some of his tissue made the Huddle parts reactive as well as they could actually clone him making the first artificial mermaid to go over the 10 hours.

A miracle. 

The CEO had told him the boy was that after the puzzle showing. 

They only needed to see how well he performed now. 

What was the Hybrid for the humans?

A friend or a foe?

The man put out his cigar thinking about how he wouldn´t live to know the answer. 

The plague had affected 95% of his body. In less than a week he would be thrown into the tank to become part of the Huddle. So someone else can see if they can access the Huddle´s mind. 

But having been there, he knew what it wanted. 

Freedom. 

He had been gentle to the mermaid out of his own pity and regret. When he covered his ears, or tapped the glass. He knew it wasn´t enough to pay back for the suffering he had inflicted on him. But he was crying as he saw the fire on the bunker. 

The mermaid had forgot about that pain and held into those moments where he was gentle. With innocence he didn´t deserve. Had reached to him for reassurance in the moments where he felt the most terror. 

He wouldn´t kill the mermaid. He would try to save him. He had stolen materials to make his own mind controlling helmet in the secret lab of the bunker. It was designed to be a high range mind controlling machine. 

It worked thanks to a chip in both bodies. 

He was yet to inject his but he needed to be sure he was right below the helmet when he did that. The boy already had his on his arm. 

He inhaled deeply, unaware he was about to make the mermaid go through a lot more of pain, before he was finally free. 

The monitor besides the helmet pinged on the signal the boy was entering experimentation phase. 

In the deepest last breathing in, the man made up his mind to put an end to the madness. 

And so the helmet fell on his head as he injected the chip on his arm. 

\--------

The boy opened his eyes held tight on the lab. He stayed completely still knowing perfectly the protocol. 

The boy was asleep. 

The man would get him out of there. 

The scientist took notice of his stillness and waited to check on his vitals before running a few other tests. The man knew he had told them he had attacked him. But he proved to be the best tranquil hybrid of life. He got free. Well, until he was put handcuffs again. He didn´t even bolt in surprise when someone came barging in to say his original body, the head researcher had ordered to not put handcuffs on him again. 

He was walking around the building with free hands. He had never been an actor, so he wasn´t sure if he was acting as the boy did. He could keep it on like that, until he found the chance to escape. But first, he needed to get to the drawer in the closet. 

Once they shoved him into the closet, he started to work on step one of his plan. 

Those were master keys. He would be able to open any door in the building if he needed to. He grinned as he foudn himself saying how lucky he was to have worked as the head of the department. It was such a grim joke he would laugh. But he felt a sting on his throat that made him cough. So that was what the boy felt, huh?

He put the key into one of his pockets and mentally rehearsed his escape routes. It was all depending if he was meeting the boy with the yellow sweater or not again. Luckily his orders to put him back into the social settings were quite fast to reach. So he didn´t need to wait two hours to get into the boy´s room. 

He knew of the boy´s schemes so he wasn´t surprised he strook him with the shock stick as soon as he saw him. 

He was panting on the floor when the boy in yellow tried stricking him again as he laughed. Not expecting the boy in the red sweater to grab the stick and shock him unconscious. He rubbed the place where he had sticked the tool as he walked to the other side of the room. He didn´t have time before the guards tried to catch him and see the boy wasn´t suited to be on social settings. Five minutes if he was being nice. 

He opened the door to a lone corridor. Left, all straight, then right, then left again. His steps were almost mousy. It wasn´t until the alarm went off that he changed of plans. Having two adults with guns going after you in a cramped corridor wasn´t exactly the best. Turning over the fire extinguisher, almost drifting, there was the ventilation tube that connected above. He had made enough distance to have time to open the lid and start climbing. He heard the guards keep running over the corridor as he accelerated his pace on the ventilation duct. He was about to make it to the side where the emergency stairs were, when he heard people going down the stairs. He stayed for a few seconds but noticed he would need to go through the second route. Luckily he only needed to go down some stairs to get to the side of the building that was closer to the woods. 

He got to the ventilation lid. It had a pressurized system so he rotated the handgrip and then pushed open. He then started to run. He heard guards yelling at him. And heard the bullets flying by too close to be fine. He got into the woods hearing dogs biting on his ankles. And when he reached a cliff he jumped. 

He flew for a second. 

Before falling down in a grievous way. He couldn´t make up up from down as he rolled over. But once he had stopped moving the foliage around him covered him from the guards rushing in their vans. He was somehow safe. He walked crouched in the woods foliage until he finally reached a wall of dirt that was close to the farm. 

He would shut off the Huddle. But for that, he needed to shut off the power centrals in all the city. The one closest to him now was... the one on the bunker. 

He would need to reach the last one and run back when he could. 

He needed to also put the boy safe.

And so it began.

\-------

Finally. 

After a full week. He had deactivated every single one of the power centrals. He was standing on the bunker´s closed door in the boy´s body. His body had a few scratches, but nothing he should be worried about. The boy´s mermaid nature had resurfaced again as well. Being able to use his amphibious lungs. The door opened.

In a quick inhaling he got in and it was shocking to see his own body hanging that way from the helmet. He tried to brush the feeling away as he finally got to the last cable to pull and free the Huddle and the boy. 

He grabbed it and pulled with all his force. It took him a while to unplug it. But when he did, everything was over in less than a second. 

He felt his consciousness go back to the Huddle and disappear from it. 

Maybe that´s what being brain dead felt like. 

Nothingness. 

His real body was useless after a week of no water, or treatment in any form. 

His body was dead. 

His place in the Huddle had never been. 

And the body he had been using until now, was the boy´s. Not his. 

So that´s why, when he felt himself awake with no force whatsoever and feeling as dry as a raisin, he knew his punishment was to live. 

The boy had somehow brought him back to life. 

Oh... His body tissues had unusually high resistance and made the Huddle parts to be reactive, right? 

He shouldn´t be aware of that...

\----

But he was. 

During the experiments, the mermaid never lost consciousness. He never had a way to communicate he was active. 

So despite the man´s best efforts, he had known from the very beginning what his intentions were. 

The boy had gathered lots of his own tissue to bring him back right after he regained control of his body. 

The boy had lit up when the man had opened his eyes and didn´t know what to do but grab a can and shove it into his hand. 

The man smiled in pain and happiness. 

The boy had never needed food to exist, so he shouldn´t know about it. Besides observation. When he managed to eat something he laughed. 

And then laughed some more as he noticed his condition got visibly better. 

He was part of the Huddle in a way, but the Huddle had gave him the sturdiness to survive beyond human limits. 

\----

Completely unlikely. 

Those two words were the absolute truth to everything going around. 

His apprentice had actually found a cure to the plague after the Huddle´s sudden death. It was the same chemicals that made the mermaid an hybrid. Only mixed up with a bit of the Huddle´s tissue. A vaccine. 

The animals were also saved. The crops were much difficult to get back, but eventually, food began to grow again. 

Suddenly the world that had been so grim, became something with light. 

He didn´t know if all of it made sense but he didn´t care. He was somehow safe and he would ensure the boy´s safety with his life if he needed to. 

The boy had actually grown a lot as well. He was around his size now but was still really scrawny. 

He had the appearence of a 17 year old boy now. 

The boy came trotting to him from the barn. Handing him a note to make up for his useless throat. Which had always tormented the man to see on an everyday basis. 

The man had teached him sign language but forced him to read his awful handwriting just so he would pat his head for a job well done. 

"Thanks"

The man started crying and wouldn´t stop even if the boy soothed him with hugs and gentle taps on his back. 

But the boy would not stop until the man pulled away and they went back to the house together. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it I invite you to follow me on Tumblr, Twitter and instagram as @ piamio (@PiTheCookieMon on twitter) or support me with a ko-fi. 
> 
> Idek why I put so much effort into this but I hope it was worth it and was fun to read.


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